This invention relates to a live poultry-conveying, counting and crating device comprising
(a) a chicken house; PA1 (b) a counting station; PA1 (c) live poultry-conveying means for conveying live poultry inside and out of the chicken house through the counting station; PA1 (d) a loading chute having an inlet opening at the upper end of the latter and adapted for receiving live poultry from the live poultry-conveying means, and an outlet opening at the lower end of the latter; and PA1 (e) a transport mechanism for transporting empty coops having an aperture in their top face to the outlet opening of the chute and coops filled with live poultry away from the outlet opening of said chute; PA1 said transport mechanism comprising means for stopping each coop as it arrives at said outlet opening for a time sufficient to fill said coop with a determined number of live poultry.
A live poultry conveying, counting and crating device of the above type is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,110,388 to G. Elliott et al. However, conveying live poultry to a drop chute of the type used in the known device easily leads to damaging of the fowl and/or to jamming in the chute which in this device is in the form of a hopper. Moreover, filling of the coops having a central opening large enough to admit a fowl at a time, with the coop in a horizontal position standing substantially upright on its flat bottom is cumbersome as the fowl get into each other's way thus requiring a considerable lapse of time for filling each coop with the required number of fowl, usually being in the order of 15 to 20 individuals.